Fun baseball season with both of our hometown teams making the playoffs.
In honor of the Orioles, here’s a little trivia quiz for you:
Name the first Oriole to hit 50 home runs?
First Oriole to win Cy Young award?
First Oriole to win the American League MVP award?
Name the MVP of the Orioles’ World Series win against the Phillies in 1983?
(Answers: Brady Anderson, Mike Cueller, Brooks Robinson, and Rick Dempsey.)
Speaking of Mike Cueller, he is the source of the best ever Oriole-related quote: Earl Weaver when asked about Mike Cuellar’s complaint that he wasn’t getting enough work, saying, “I gave Mike more chances than I gave my first wife.”
Re: the Nationals, when they were the Expos and moved to D.C. in 2005, they sponsored a contest to come up with a new name for them. The following is from Wikipedia:
Although there was some sentiment to revive the name Senators, political considerations factored into the choice of Nationals, a revival of the first American League franchise’s “official” nickname used from 1905 to 1956. Politicians and others in the District of Columbia objected to the name Senators because the District of Columbia does not have voting representation in Congress. In addition, the Rangers still owned the rights to the Senators name, although the Nationals were able to acquire the rights to the curly “W” from the Rangers. Coincidentally, the sitting President at the time of the move, George W. Bush, had at one time owned the Rangers.
I still believe that my contest submission for their new name – “The Law” – would have been better than “The Nationals.” Just think what today’s sports page headline would have read: “Law Wins.”